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Alexander Hamilton 



BY / 

GEORGE SHEA 



^12^ 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

iSSo 

[Price, 25 Cents. ] 



Alexander Hamilton 



BY 

GEORGE SHEA 



NEW YORK '^' Q ' 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SO 
1880 - 

[ Price, 25 Cents. ] 






/- 



• (o 



Copyright, 1880, by 
GEORGE SHEA 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company, 

201-213 East Tivelfth Street, 

New York. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 



Alexander Hamilton, the ablest Ameri- 
can jurist and statesman of the early constitu- 
tional era of the United States, was born at the 
island of Nevis, one of the Antilles under the 
dominion of England, on January ii, 1757- 
His father was a Scotch emigrant who had 
settled at St. Christopher, where he engaged in 
mercantile business. His mother was the 
daughter of a Huguenot named Faucette, a 
prosperous physician of Nevis. She had been 
the wife of a Mr. (lirvine, also a physician, and 
during a brief married life dwelt at St. Chris- 
topher ; but, owing to faults of his, she ap- 
pears to have been driven to procure the judicial 
dissolution of the marriage, after which she re- 
turned to her father's home at Nevis, and there 
married James Hamilton. She bore to him 



4 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

many sons, of whom none but Thomas and 
Alexander Hved to maturity. Alexander, the 
youngest, was called after his paternal grand- 
father, who described himself " of Grange," 
which is said to have been the family seat in 
Ayrshire, Scotland. The master of Grange 
married, in 1730, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of 
Sir Robert Pollock ; and young Hamilton, when 
he had risen to fame and station, said, " My 
blood is as good as that of those who plume 
themselves upon their ancestry." He styled 
his suburban residence, near New York, ''The 
Grange." 

His mother died while he was still a child, but 
not before he was capable of receiving and pre- 
serving distinct recollections of her. He de- 
rived from her an independent spirit, energy, 
self-reliance, and a disposition for metaphysical 
inquiries ; and these qualities were conspicuous 
from an early age. His father's business mis- 
fortunes casting the boy upon the care of some 
of the mother's relatives, he was taken by them 
to their home at St. Croix, and there at school 
he first evinced that proficiency which marked 
him throughout his career. The opportunities 
for school training were at that time very lim- 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 5 

ited at St. Croix, and when, in his thirteenth 
year, he entered the counting-house of Mr. Nicho- 
las Cruger, at that port, he had already received 
all the benefit such schools were able to impart. 
This was in the autumn of 1769. In less than a 
year he was capable of more than clerkly duty, 
and Mr. Cruger, going on a foreign journey, 
left him in sole charge of the mercantile house. 
His business correspondence during this time, 
and the prosperity which attended the affairs, 
show that Mr. Cruger's confidence was not mis- 
placed. This practical acquaintance with mer- 
cantile affairs was to be most serviceable to 
Hamilton. In the methodical and energetic 
management of matters of state, and in the pru- 
dent care of weighty interests, the influence of 
the knowledge and experience acquired by him 
in the counting-house at St. Croix is notable. 
During these three years he was the same close 
student that his after years more fully reveal. 
He read standard books, which laid open the 
theories of value and of trade, thinking out to 
feasible methods how those theories might be 
advantageously applied to the daily work he 
had in hand. He read history, poetry, and 
philosophy. The French language became 



6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

familiar to him by its general use in society and 
in the transactions of commerce, and he always 
wrote it with accuracy and elegance, and spoke 
it fluently and with the accent of native speech. 
The Rev. Hugh Knox, D.D., an Irishman, a 
divine of the Presbyterian Church, a scholar of 
distinction honored as such by the university 
of Glasgow, was Hamilton's first adequate pre- 
ceptor, and was the first to discover the rich 
resources and useful tendencies of his intellectual 
and moral character. Under his friendly and 
gratuitous tutorship Hamilton supplied many 
parts in which his education was deficient. But 
the boy had aims beyond where he was ; and 
when an incident, trivial in itself, led to an ar- 
rangement by which a more liberal education 
was opened to him, he left the West Indies, in 
October, 1772, and proceeded to New York. 
There, aided by letters from his friend Dr. 
Knox, he made the acquaintance of some of the 
leading men in that and the adjoining province 
of New Jersey. A year at the grammar school 
at Elizabethtown in the latter province proved 
sufficient to prepare him for the collegiate course, 
and in the spring of 1774 he entered as a student 
the King's (now Columbia) College, and, by 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 7 

special privilege, pursued the usual studies ac- 
cording to a plan which he laid out for himself. 
When, in 1774, the enforcement of the Bos- 
ton '* Port Bill " aroused even the most moder- 
ate in the other colonies to sympathize with the 
province of Massachusetts Bay, Hamilton 
studied the political questions relating to the 
controversy between the colonies and the par- 
liament of England with his habitual research 
and enlightened reasoning. He was convinced 
that his duty as an Englishman required him to 
take part with the colonists against the assertion 
of the ''omnipotence of parliament." The 
famous tract by Lord Somers entitled The 
Judgment of ivhole Kingdojns and Nations, &c., 
which repudiates this as a thing unknown to the 
law of England, was republished in 1773 at 
Philadelphia, and widely circulated throughout 
the provinces, in aid of the cause of colonial re- 
sistance. Its effect upon the mind of Hamilton 
is to be observed in his writings of this time. 
With his usual ardor he now busied himself in 
public discussion. Before his eighteenth year 
ended his reputation as an orator and writer was 
established. His chief opponent at this period 
was the distinguished divine Samuel Seabury, 



8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

who a few years later (1783) was consecrated in 
Scotland the first bishop of the United States of 
America. The fame of their debates spread 
over the whole country, and Hamilton was the 
acknowledged " oracle " of the party of moder- 
ation, with which he acted. 

While still a collegian he joined the military 
of the province of New York, and began as the 
captain of its first company of artillery employed 
in the continental service. To qualify himself 
for such a position he had, under the immediate 
instruction of an experienced soldier and officer, 
not only studied the theoretic art of war, but en- 
gaged with others in receiving daily for several 
months practical lessons in the field-drill. He 
was active with his company of artillerists at the 
battle on Long Island, at Harlem Plains, at 
Chatterton's Hill, New Brunswick, Trenton, and 
Princeton. At Harlem Heights he first attract- 
ed the attention of Washington, and again at 
New Brunswick excited the commander's admi- 
ration by the courage and skill with which he 
held in check the advance of the British forces, 
while the American army was retreating toward 
the Delaware. When the army went, in Janu- 
ary, 1777, into winter quarters at Morristown, 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 9 

Hamilton, now grown in the friendship and con- 
fidence of Washington, resigned his command, 
became Washington's private secretary, and was 
raised to the rank of Heutenant-colonel. Ham- 
ilton remained on the staff until April, 1781, 
when an unusual and hasty warmth of temper 
on both sides led to the severance of this partic- 
ular connection, but their mutual friendship re- 
mained and even increased. He was married 
in 1780 to Elizabeth, second daughter of Gen- 
eral Philip Schuyler, a distinguished soldier and 
statesman of the Revolution. For a brief space 
Hamilton occupied his time in exposing the in- 
herent defects of the existing confederation by 
a series of excellent papers known as The Con- 
tinentalist. But the country once more needed 
his more active aid ; he returned to the army, 
led one most brilliant attack, and was present 
with a command at the surrender of Lord Corn- 
wallis. 

The war to maintain the declaration of inde- 
pendence was fought, but it did not make nor 
leave the United Colonies a nation. A new 
system of government and '* a coercive union " 
were insisted upon by Hamilton and other fore- 
most men as necessary. But many obstacles 



10 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

stood in the way. Historical prejudice and the 
selfishness of local interests were against con- 
cessions to a union of the States. Traditional 
dread of centralized government, traditional 
dread of an hereditary aristocracy, dread that a 
national legislature, if allowed full authority, 
might assert and act upon the repudiated doc- 
trine of an omnipotence of parliament, dread 
that a supreme general government might ab- 
sorb, or even usurp, under the plea of care for 
the public welfare, those local interests which 
the States were now able to maintain, and which 
the Confederation was meant to protect — the 
concurrence of these several causes contributed 
to bring out opposition whenever a more perfect 
union was proposed. 

The first suggestion toward the establishment 
of an adequate and permanent government 
came, as it is now conceded, from Hamilton. 
It was contained in a letter written by him, 
September 3, 1780, to James Duane, a delegate 
from New York to the Congress at Philadelphia. 
He wrote a yet more remarkable letter the fol- 
lowing year (April 30) to Robert Morris, the 
famous financier of the Revolution, in which not 
a mere suggestion but a matured and complete 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. II 

scheme of national finance, including a plan for 
a United States bank, was discussed and laid 
out. These letters are, indeed, the principia 
of the American government in its organization 
and administration. When the convention of 
delegates met at Annapolis, Maryland, in Sep- 
tember, 1786, the influence of Hamilton upon 
the destinies of his country began to be favored 
by circumstances. Although the object of that 
convention was limited to simply commercial 
projects, yet, under his and Madison's prudent 
management, an address was finally issued which 
brought about the great and conclusive conven- 
tion of 1787 at Philadelphia. The form of gov- 
ernment then instituted is, in its groundwork 
and its principal features, a restoration and per- 
fecting of the ancient constitutional liberties of 
England. While the particular plan proposed 
by Hamilton was, as were other projects, laid 
aside, yet it was the spirit of the system con- 
ceived by him which then prevailed, and has 
since been a controlling principle in the admin- 
istration of government. Guizot says of him 
that "there is not in the constitution of the 
United States an element of order, of force, of 
duration, which he did not powerfully contribute 



12 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

to introduce into it and to cause to predomi- 
nate." It was at tliis period that Hamilton, in 
association with John Jay and James Madison, 
wrote his parts of TJie Federalist. 

At the convention, called by the State of New 
York, which met at Poughkeepsie, on the Hud- 
son River, June, 1788, to ratify the proposed 
National Constitution, the superb ability of 
Hamilton for organizing and leading intelligent 
pubhc opinion displayed itself fully. The util- 
ity of candid, earnest, reasonable debate has 
seldom been more approved by its results. A 
most disheartening minority of the delegates 
when the convention first met were in favor of 
the Constitution. When Hamilton ceased his 
efforts, not only had he gained to his support a 
majority, but even ultimately he had the aid and 
vote of his most eloquent and most powerful an- 
tagonist. At length Hamilton arose in the con- 
vention, and, stating that Virginia had ratified 
the Constitution, and that the Union was there- 
by an accomplished fact, moved that they cease 
their contentions and add New York to the new 
empire of republican states. That day his la- 
bors culminated in entire success. 

Washington, when forming the cabinet for 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. I3 

his first presidential administration, naturally 
turned to Robert Morris as the proper person 
to take the secretaryship of the treasury ; but 
Morris declined, insisting that Hamilton was 
*'the one man in the United States" fitted by 
studies and ability to create a public credit and 
bring the resources of the country into active 
efficiency. Washington found his former mili- 
tary secretary more than equal to the task. The 
fiscal affairs of the country were at once organ- 
ized, and prosperity quickly came. Hamilton 
achieved an immediate success which all aeree 
is without parallel. He also was really the or- 
ganizer of the administration of the new Gov- 
ernment, and in its chief department it remains 
to this day without change. His state papers, 
written during the two presidential terms of 
Washington, are regarded as of the highest 
character for knowledge of the case, wisdom, 
and practical method ; and his report on the 
constitutionality of a national bank, in which he 
fully develops his favorite pohcy of the implied 
powers of the Government, and the other report, 
nominally upon manufactures, which embraces 
in its range every pursuit of human industry 
susceptible of encouragement under such a gov- 



14 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

ernment as he wished to see that of the United 
States, are those productions in which the rare 
quaHties of his mind abundantly manifest their 
force and precision. President Van Buren de- 
clared the latter paper to be '* Hamilton's mas- 
terpiece." 

After these labors Hamilton, though offered 
the position of chief-justice of the United States, 
remained at the bar of his adopted State. He 
soon rose to its highest rank, and was esteemed 
its unrivalled leader. As a citizen, and without 
the desire of public office, he continued always 
actively interested in public aff*airs. His intense 
and uncompromising moral nature engendered 
many political antipathies, though personally 
few were more loved for amiability and respected 
for their honor. Among those men whom he 
deemed it a patriotic duty to defeat in a personal 
ambition was Aaron Burr, the vice-president of 
the United States. Party lines were marked 
and party spirit fierce. Burr appreciated what 
would be the effect of Hamilton's continued op- 
position to his political designs, and knew that 
he was a man to be neither conciliated in this 
respect nor outmanoeuvred. He eagerly watched 
for an opportunity to impute offence. A trivial 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. I 5 

and inadequate occasion soon came. An indis- 
creet person repeated a remark which he said 
Hamilton made in a familiar conversation at the 
house of a common friend, to the purport that 
he had a *' despicable " opinion of Burr. Upon 
this gossip Burr acted ; and so subtle was the 
manner with which he managed the correspon- 
dence for his determined purpose that he, accord- 
ing to the tone of society at that time, made 
it, in Hamilton's misconception, an obligation, 
due to his continued usefulness in public affairs, 
to accept a challenge. They met early on the 
morning of July 1 1, 1804, at a sequestered place 
beneath the hills of Weehawken, on the west 
bank of the Hudson River, opposite to the city 
of New York. Hamilton was mortally wounded 
at the first fire. As he fell, his own pistol was 
by accident discharged, and the ball struck the 
ground near him. He did not himself intend to 
fire. He died the following day, in the forty- 
eighth year of his age. His death was consid- 
ered a national calamity. Eight of his children, 
four boys and four girls, were left to his widow's 
care. She survived him half a century, dying 
at the age of ninety-seven, and during all that 



l6 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

time she remained attired in the widow's dress 
of the early times. 

The peculiarity of Hamilton's genius consist- 
ed of qualities which eminently distinguish him 
from the other great personages of his time. 
The epithet precocious was never applicable to 
him, for whatever he did, even in his boyhood, 
was accomplished with facility, and resulted in 
a perfection that the works of latter years did 
not exceed. He was ever mature. His intel- 
lect pierced through the most subtle and pro- 
found problems, and apparently without the 
labor of experiment. He "could see conse- 
quents yet dormant in their principles," or, as 
Talleyrand said of him on more than one occa- 
sion, ** he divined." ''Hamilton avait devM 
I'Europe," was the reason given by the prince 
when he compared him to Fox and Napoleon. 
His industry was marvellous, and his learning 
equal to the creative faculty of his mind. The 
fecundity, power, vigor, and maturity of his in- 
tellectual works as fully impressed his contem- 
poraries as they have since impressed posterity. 

His political writings seem, in the estimation 
of judicious and eminent writers in America, 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 1/ 

Great Britain, and France, to place him in the 
first rank of master minds. The most widely 
known of these writings are those contained in 
The Federalist. Translations of them have 
been published at Paris (the first as early as 
1792), and were studied by the chief public men 
of that period. It has been asserted that they 
exhibit an extent and precision of information, 
a profundity of research, and an accurateness of 
understanding which would have done honor to 
the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or 
modern times, that for comprehensiveness of 
design, strength, clearness, and simplicity they 
have no parallel {Blackwood's Magazine, Janu- 
ary, 1825, and The Edinbiu'gJi Reviezu, No. 24). 
Talleyrand called the attention of European 
statesmen to the merits of The Federalist as a 
copious source of correct maxims and profound 
thought ; and Guizot says that, " in the applica- 
tion of elementary principles of government to 
practical administration, it was the greatest work 
known to him." Laboulaye has expressed at 
great length his deliberate judgment of Hamil- 
ton's genius and wisdom, and of the consummate 
ability with which he called into existence a new 
system of government and organized its admin- 



1 8 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

istration {Histoire des Etats-Unis, tome iii.). 
And Hamilton's own countrymen have not been 
less emphatic in grateful acknowledgment, espe- 
cially Chief-Justice Marshall, the judicial inter- 
preter and expounder of the principles of the 
American Constitution. 

In person Hamilton was below the medium 
height, slender, almost delicate in frame, instinct 
with life, erect and quick in gait; his general 
address was graceful and nervous, indicating the 
energy, exactness, and activity of his mind. 
His complexion was bright and ruddy, his hair 
light, and the whole countenance decidedly Scot- 
tish in form and expression. His political ene- 
mies frankly spoke of his manner and conversa- 
tion, and regretted its irresistible charm. The 
best portraits of him are by Trumbull, Wiemar, 
Ames, and there is a good bust by Cerrachi. 

For full memoirs of Hamilton, see the elabor- 
ate Life, in 7 vols., by John Church Hamilton, 
one of his sons, New York, 1857 ; the Life by 
Dr. Renwick, published in Harper s Family 
Library ; LJfe by Morse, 2 vols., Boston, 1876 ; 
Edouard Laboulaye's Histoire des Etats-Unis, 
tome iii., Paris, 1870; Curtis's History of the 
Constitution of the United States, 2 vols.. New 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. I9 

York, 1858; Relthmiiller's Hamilton and his 
Conte7)iporaries, London, 1864; Bancroft's His- 
tory of the United States, in the 7th and suc- 
ceeding vols.; and Shea's Life and Epoch of 
Hamilton, 2d ed., New York, 1880. 



The Standard Edition of Gladstone's Essays. 



(JiFflnings of JPhsI^ Sfafs, 

CY 

The Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. 



Seven Volumes, IGtno, Cloth, per volume, $1.00. 



The extraordinary scope of Mr. Gladstone's learning — the wonder ol 
his friends and enemies alike — and his firm grasp of every subject he 
discusses, make his essays much more than transient literature. Their 
collection and publication in permanent shape were of course certain to 
be undertaken sooner or later; and now that they are so published with 
the benefit of his own revision, they will need little heralding in England 
or America. 

What Mr. Gladstone has written in the last thirty-six years — the period 
covered by this collection — has probably had the attention of as large an 
English-speaking public as any writer on political and social topics ever 
reached in his own life-time. The papers which he has chosen as of 
lasting value, and included here under the title of G leanings of Past 
Years, will form the standard edition of his miscellanies, both for his 

E resent multitude of readers, and for those who will study his writings 
Iter. 



Vol. I. The Throne, and the Prince Consort; 
The Cabinet, and Constitution. 
Vol. IL— Personal and Literary. 
Vol. II!.— Historical and Speculative. 
Vol. IV.-Foreigrw ^ 9. 3 

Vol'. y\\ \ Eccies'^s^'ca'- 

Vol. VII.— ^^isceilaneouso 

*^^The above books for sale by all booksellers^ or ivill be sent, j>repaid, ■upo-'^ 
receipt of J>rice, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Pltblishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York 




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